NATIONAL

Cape Town – Nineteen years ago, Kazi Irene Boaventura, aged 7, and her 3-year-old brother Filipe fled with their mother to South Africa from Angola, as full-scale fighting again broke out in a protracted and brutal civil war. Granted refugee status, the family settled in Cape Town to start a new life.Now 26 and employed as a manager at an upscale Cape Town restaurant, Boaventura thinks of herself as South African. But her life in South Africa could end if home affairs did not grant her leave to stay on in the country.

JOHANNESBURG — Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba seemed to be channeling President Trump when he lashed out at South Africa’s government for failing to crack down on illegal immigration, saying criminally minded foreigners living in South Africa are endangering its citizens. “I feel sorry for law enforcement agencies that are actually failed by political leadership in this country, with porous borders where South Africa is made to be a haven for criminals,” Mashaba told the country’s public broadcaster last week. “This has got to end.”

When dawn came Mohammed could see both the shore and the dirt road that led away into the forest. The fishing boat, which had dropped him on a deserted stretch of coast in northern Tanzania, had long since disappeared. Now, as the sun came up, the 28-year-old teacher hoped the next stage of his journey would begin. The day passed Mohammed and the 12 other Somali men who had joined him on the boat sought shade under the thorny scrub. They had little water but shared a packet of biscuits bought in Kenya before their departure. By late afternoon it was clear they was not going anywhere. Night came again, bringing the roar and howl of wild animals. “We felt very lonely,” Mohammed remembered.

A report by the UK Guardian makes the oft-repeated claim that “South Africa has the highest number of pending asylum claims in the world, with more than a million people waiting to be processed”. Despite this figure being regularly republished in local and international news media, both claims are wrong and are based on a superficial reading of United Nations refugee data. Africa Check’smost recent fact-check on this topic established that the figure of a million “asylum claims” could be traced to a United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) 2016 report on global trends in forced displacement, which was based on 2015 data.

REGIONAL

The world has watched in horror over the last several years as millions of people have been displaced from their homes in South Sudan as a result of civil war. It’s easy to wonder what good can come from children and families being forced from their homes, torn from any sense of safety and security. As a young girl, Abuk was displaced with her family and landed in Amarillo, Texas, right in America’s Heartland. At the time, a mistake, it seemed—to connect Abuk’s family with First Baptist Church and the greater Southern Baptist family.

Ugandan will send home at least 46,000 refugees from Burundi following a request from its government. Burundian officials maintain that the country is now safe after months of civil unrest. Uganda is home to over 45,000 Burundian refugees, many of who live in the Nakivale Camp in the western Ugandan District of Isingiro. Over 200,000 Burundians have fled the country after violence broke out in protest of President Pierre Nkurunziza’s re-election in 2015.

The Ugandan government is running out of land for the over one million refugees seeking shelter on its soil. “The government land designated for refugees is limited and most of those areas are now occupied,” Hillary Onek, Uganda’s minister for relief, disaster preparedness and refugees, told journalists at a news conference Tuesday. Uganda now hosts over one million refugees, mainly from volatile neighboring countries, especially South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to figures from the UNHCR refugee agency. This makes it the third-largest refugee-hosting country in Africa and eighth in the world.

INTERNATIONAL

LGBTQ refugees and others have reached the United States in recent days, benefiting from the court-ordered stay on President Donald Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order that sought to tighten border controls. Among them was pre-screened Ugandan refugee Simon Kwesigabo, who had been left homeless on the streets of Nairobi, Kenya, after Trump’s executive order canceled his scheduled mid-February flight to the United States.NBC News reported on how the temporary stay eased the work of the African Human Rights Coalition, which helps Ugandan LGBTQ refugees seeking to relocate from Kenya to the United States.

Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal crossed the Canada-US border illegally after being denied refugee status in the US. But the two Ghanaians, who walked miles across snow-covered fields in frigid temperatures, lost fingers and parts of their ears to frostbite during the journey. They told the BBC their story.

An Executive Order issued by US President Donald Trump’s administration on January 27th suspended all refugee admission for 120 days from seven Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. The political backlash has been severe and US courts have suspended the ban. The Conversation Africa’s Samantha Spooner asked Cristiano d’Orsi to explain the impact on Africa’s refugees if the ban is reinstated.